MESSI, INTER MIAMI TO SKIP U.S. OPEN CUP
Lionel Messi and Inter Miami won’t compete in this year’s U.S. Open Cup and just eight of Major League Soccer’s 26 American teams will enter the competition.
Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles FC, Salt Lake, San Jose and Seattle will enter the 96-team competition, the U.S. Soccer Federation said Friday.
Houston is the defending tournament champion and the others were among the top seven teams from last year’s regular-season Supporters’ Shield standings who are not in this year’s CONCACAF Champions Cup.
MLS teams will enter in the fourth round and face only lower-tier squads until a head-to-head MLS matchup is unavoidable. Last year, 18 MLS teams entered in the third round and eight in the fourth.
Houston beat Miami 2-1 in last year’s final. Messi missed the game because of an injury.
Since the start of MLS in 1996, the only team not from the first tier to win the competition was the 1999 Rochester Raging Rhinos of the USL’S second-tier A-league, which beat the Colorado Rapids 2-0 in the final.
MLS announced Dec. 15 it was pulling all its teams from the nation’s oldest soccer competition, which started in 1914, and was replacing them with thirdtier developmental sides from MLS Next Pro.
The USSF said five days later it was treating MLS’ decision as a request that it was turning down.
In its announcement, the USSF said it improved financial incentives, increased travel reimbursement and added new commercial partners.
Fanatics founder Michael Rubin says his company is being unfairly blamed for new Major League Baseball uniforms that have seethrough pants and other fit and design problems.
“This is a little bit of a difficult position,” he said on Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
“We’re purely doing exactly as we’ve been told, and we’ve been told we’re doing everything exactly right. And we’re getting the s--t kicked out of us. So that’s not fun.”
Since reporting to spring training this month, some players have complained about the fit of new uniforms. The white pants worn by some teams are also see-through enough to clearly show tucked-in jersey tops.
“I know everyone hates them,” Phillies shortstop Trea Turner said. “We all liked what we had. We understand business, but I think everyone wanted to keep it the same way, for the most part, with some tweaks here or there.”
Rubin said uniforms were made to the specifications set by MLB and Nike. Fanatics has been making the baseball uniform since 2017, he said; Fanatics bought the company that has been making the uniforms since 2005, so there has been no real change in the manufacturer in almost two decades.